Genetic relationship of asiatic hard clam populations collected in northern coastal provinces in vietnam based on mtDNA sequence analysis

Abstract

The genetic relationship of some Asiatic hard clam (Meretrix meretrix) based on mtDNA COI sequence analysis was investigated for populations collected in Thai Binh, Nam Dinh, Nghe An provinces in Vietnam. In addition, this research also targets at species identification based on COI sequences. In total of 59 sequences analyzed, 19 sequences belonged to Meretrix meretrix species with Gen Bank accession number DQ399399.1. 17 sequences of M. meretrix were used for genetic relationship analysis among 3 populations. In which, 6 polymorphic sites, 3 parsimony informative sites and 4 haplotypes observed for the COI gene. Moderately genetic population diversity was observed, overall haplotype and nucleotide diversity were 0.476±0.233 and 0.00151±0.00069, respectively. Generally, genetic differentiation (F ST ) (F ST < 0.15) was moderate. The genetic distance was rather low, which ranged from 0.001 (Thai Binh-NgheAn, Thai Binh-Nam Dinh populations) to 0.002 (Nam Dinh -Nghe An populations). The result of haplotype network constructing indicated that populations shared common haplotype and there was no specific isolation of the haplotypes of the populations. Hence, it showed M. meretrix populations had intimate genetic relationship. The result of phylogenic tree indicated that three M. meretrix populations (Thai Binh, Nam Dinh, Nghe An) had a very small or no genetic variation among populations.

Population genetic structure of Asiatic Hard Clam (Meretrix meretrix) in Thailand based on Cytochrome Oxidase subunit I gene sequence

“…This pattern is generated by new mutations accumulation in a sudden population expansion (Chu et al 2012). This genetic diversity pattern was reported in various clam species including Donax vittatus (Fernández-Pérez et al 2017), M. petechialis (Wang et al 2017a), and M. meretrix (Trang et al 2018). Generally, nucleotide diversity displays the mean number of differences among all pairs of haplotypes in each population and used to discuss a genetic diversity in the population (Ma et al 2010).…”

“…The nucleotide sequencing of mtDNA COI has been used for studies population genetic structure of various clams such as Tridacna crocea and T. squamosa (Neo and Todd 2012), Atrina pectinata (Xue et al 2014), and M. petechialis (Zheng et al 2019). Several population genetic structure studies on M. meretrix have been revealed in Vietnam (Trang et al 2018) and China (Gu et al 2015) but no studies have been reported from Thailand. The genetic information of the genetic structure in marine species is essential to the management of marine resources, especially when sharing information with biological studies, such as reproduction, behavior, and spawning time.…”